Tag: Seth W

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Advice: Send Awesome (Snail) Mail

Yes, pitching editors and sending CDs to Pitchfork is important. But what about the CDs and shirts you’re mailing out to your customers? How do you treat the people who are actually putting money in your pocket? (HINT: I hope it’s more fun than what you’re sending to Pitchfork)

When you’re small you can go the extra mile. When you care, it doesn’t seem like extra effort. I’m talking hand written notes, or extra goodies tossed in with a paid order.

Some bands and labels treat this very “business class;” here’s your CD in a padded envelope. End of transaction. Meh.

In late 2013, one of my Skull Toaster readers ordered a CD from this doom band in Seattle, WA called Giza. They sent him an extra copy with a hand written note saying something like, “give it to a friend.“

So this reader got in touch with me and we did a give-away on Skull Toaster with that extra copy, exposing that band to a whole new audience that loves and appreciates that sort of music. And now they’re linked here, too. Funny how that can work, huh?

Johnny Cupcakes throws candy and other goodies into random orders. Why? Eh, why not?

I said something nice about MailChimp on Twitter awhile back and they sent me a t-shirt and a hat. Why? Again, why not? People love getting stuff in the mail, right?

If you can make someone feel special, do that. If you can add some delight to someone’s day, what the heck are you waiting for? Permission? There’s enough doom and gloom in everyone’s social media feeds. Why not put something unexpected and awesome in someone’s mailbox?

I recently took part in an online service with a company I used for the past few years. At the end of the survey they said they’d send me a shirt. Oh, fun!

Well, I got the shirt, but I noticed it was sent from a fulfillment company (the return address actually said fulfillment company). Instead of a hand-written note or stickers, there was a tiny "filler invoice,” with a literal $0.00 charge. No one at the company I did the survey with touched this. It was automated. 

A team of unpaid interns can do something like that. There was no magic.
Compare that to my friend Travis, who tells me all the time about ordering from a tiny label (kidding) called Dischord and the hand-written thank-you notes they include. 

If anyone is too busy to write handwritten notes, it’s them. Delighting your mail order customers is like out-running bear; you only have to be faster than your friends (your competitors). In a world of me-too, copy-cat operations doing the bare-minumum to skate by, going just above and beyond isn’t really that much work.

Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.
 
 

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Crowded Tables

I played in a ska band when I was younger, and I’ll always remember my one bandmate and how we had so much fun at shows.

Years go by, people get married, turn 21 and stop going to shows – it happens. People move on. A few years later, my friend’s name comes up; he becomes a mythical character. He was still playing music, we knew that. One summer he’s couch surfing in Philadelphia, or squatting in NYC. All sorts of stories.

And life went on. Marriage. Divorce. MySpace.

Holidays come and go. Where’d our friend go? Oh, he touring in some band now. Australia? Woah, that’s cool!

Life goes on. Facebook happens.

But my buddy? All these years later? My pal plays in Modest Mouse now.
This isn’t a “do what you love” piece, because that’s garbage. The universe ain’t like that. You can still put in all those hours, sleep on couches, and still die alone in a ditch.

This is a “do what you do even if it not promised that it’ll ever pay the bills” piece, and do it your way. You can copy everything my buddy did and still not “make it.“

Every Thursday I stare at this sort-of blank slate in an app called Evernote. I’ve been doing this every week since 2011 and now it pays a portion of my rent (though that’s relative, as I don’t live in a cool city).

I write metal trivia and put it up on Twitter – my favorite social media network. I did that by design, as I didn’t want to mess around on Facebook (which I deleted) or Instagram (ditto).

You don’t have to be updating the social media networks if you don’t want to. If your band hates updating Twitter then stop updating Twitter. Try Tumblr. Or keep an email list and send out an occasional update. Heck, send real letters.

Just do something that you can get behind and won’t feel like a chore.

Sure, if you want to play Clear Channel venue$, hire the manager and the publicist, and do the interviews explaining to the blogger how your songs come together for the 30th time.

But, as Seth Godin wrote about in Purple Cow way back in 2003, it’s best to be first to market with your idea. There are plenty of singer songwriters out there competing for the same gigs, same labels, same features in the same magazines.  That’s a busy “market.”

When Dillinger Escape Plan did the “play crazy technical metal and go nuts at shows,” thing back in the late 90s it was exciting. The legion of imitators that followed? Meh. It’s a crowded “market” these days.

I could have started another music blog in 2011, but I chose to publish metal trivia on Twitter, to engage with a rad audience, and now it’s a revenue stream for me, and has led to other paid gigs. 

My buddy Billy Mack (https://billymackcollector.bandcamp.com) booked tours on Megabus, using Facebook messages, and Excel Spreadsheets. He’d book a month’s worth of travel way in advance for $20 and recoup that in one house show.

The standard, safe, and expected route is a crowded table, where it’s hard to find a seat. Sometimes it’s best to find another table.

Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.
 

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Considering Music Blog Coverage in 2015 vs 2005

Coverage on a music blog in 2005 is much different than it is today, yet there are still thousands of articles on how to get your young band coverage, from pitching writers to writing good subject lines. There’s a new one everyday it seems. Like this one!

That chart above is Google searches for “music blog.” It started to ramp up in 2005, peaked in 2009, and now it’s back to 2005 levels. Curios, huh?

I started Buzzgrinder in 2001, and the golden era was 2005 to 2008. The iPhone came out in 2007, right in the middle of that, and suddenly the average reader wasn’t just sitting at work on a desktop machine, or a laptop in a coffee shop. They were online more often, and in more places; in line at the bank, bored at a show, on the toilet, or just waking up.

Then as social media ramped up (Twitter and Facebook really got going in 2006), a brand new means of exposure for media outlets sprung up! You’re probably reading this article because it was linked from a social media platform. That just did not happen in 2005.

It’s a busy world online. Many of the music blogs you’re trying to get covered in publish 15+ times a day. And within your genre, that could mean 200+ posts a day across several sites. Your coverage will sit between a post about a washed-up singer getting arrested (which every outlet will re-publish) and a song premiere by some NASDAQ-listed company sponsored buzz-band. By 3pm EST, the Tweet announcing your new song will be a tumble weed rolling down an empty street.

Your coverage is also competing with, “that dress.” BuzzFeed wrote 30+ posts about the dress.

And the music fans you’re trying to win over are going to see movies, or watching the latest episodes of their favorite TV show on Netflix, all while answering work emails and deleting newsletters from The GAP, plus trying to keep up with the five podcasts they subscribe to, each of which is promoted by the show and their guests 13 time a day on social media. 

Consider the person who consumes all of that. Then remember before they get out of bed in the morning they’re getting notifications from their friends and family on Facebook, SnapChat, and Instagram. Ongoing discussions about parties, travel arrangements, romantic dates, and shoe shopping.

By the time you get done reading this four new memes will have popped up online. And by tomorrow one of them will make the five o’clock news. A week later your parents will ask you via Facebook if you heard about it.

I’m not saying don’t pitch. Please, do. Just be aware that the landscape has changed. For a young band, pitching today is as difficult ever, but the impact of that coverage is not the same.

On February 10th, 2010, news broke that Howard Jones left Killswitch Engage (a Grammy nominated band) who were in the middle of touring. I was standing outside Irving Plaza in New York City (this is when I was running Noise Creep for AOL Music), at their March 18th or 19th show when venue staff came out to announce that Jones would not be singing that night. Nearly everyone at the front of line, die-hard KsE fans who probably bought tickets months before, were aghast. They were blind-sided by the news. 

Month old news about a Grammy nominated band on big tour and fans at the NYC tour stop didn’t even know. That was just five years ago. 

We’re all at a different places today, aren’t we? You feel it, right? The notifications, the Sunday night emails from work, the glut of new shows to watch, that new album, the stack of magazines you haven’t read yet, the texts from co-workers.

Your music isn’t just competing for coverage with others artists in your genre on the cool music blog, you’re competing with the next ‘Harlem Shake’ or the pop singer who messed up the National Anthem at an NBA game 12 minutes ago. I’m not saying it’s fair, or right, but I’m saying your coveted music blog coverage is a drop in the ocean of track listing announcements, movie star drama, and possibly the next meme that will become THE Halloween costume later this year.

Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.

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Bands: Here Are A Few Tips For Improving Your Emails

Hello, everyone! I know we took a little time off yesterday without warning, but a close friend of the Haulix family passed away and we needed some time to mourn. Fortunately, many of our close friends in the industry reached out to help us continue our content creation efforts while we reflect on our recently deceased friend. The piece you’re about to read was created by Seth Werkheiser, and it offers insight that could help bands and artists of all sizes improve their digital marketing efforts.

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

I’ve talked to a handful of musicians and bands lately about the subject of “social media.” I usually steer the conversation towards email marketing, and explain how it converts better than the “social media flavor of the week.”

“But I don’t want to just email out our tour dates,” they usually say, explaining that they don’t like those emails.

There’s a simple solution: don’t be like the lazy bands who do just that.

Copying and pasting your tour dates into an email is very boring. An unpaid intern could do it. In their sleep.

Instead, try this: out of the 34 photos you posted to Instagram and Facebook during the course of your last few shows, or tours, pick a handful that “clicked well.” What dose that mean? That means the photos that got the most "likes,” or shares. Take those, and put a few of them into your next email.

Now, here’s the part where an unpaid intern can’t do what you do.

You write the back story. The location. Explain what happened. You lived it, bled it, slept in it. You drove all those hours, got sick, met an amazing character in a small town, hung out with coolest people.

Everyone loves a good story, and as a traveling musician you’ve got stories to tell, so stop “blasting” your tour dates every five minutes like every other hack band out there.

As Betabrand founder Chris Lindland says, “the assumption is that not everybody wants to shop every single time they get a newsletter.”

Think about that for a second: not everyone is ready buy tickets to your next show or watch your new music video (they might be watching Netflix at the moment). But if you tell a story about how cops nearly shut down your video shoot, you might distract them from ‘Orange is the New Black’ long enough to at least get a click!

For example, there’ a new video out from the Cancer Bats, for their song ‘Satellites.’ In the video they shoot fireworks at their drummer in a field the whole time.

 
Wait, they what?

How did they not get arrested shooting that video? Did anyone get burned? How much did they spend on fireworks? Who came up with that idea of shooting fireworks at their drummer? 

Their YouTube description field? "SATELLITES!! Hope you like it!” Snooze.

So don’t do that with your own email newsletter. Get creative. Just because every other band out there sends a list of tour dates and nothing more doesn’t mean you have to do the same.

Share some photos, stories from the road, and then paste your tour dates at the bottom of the email. Heck, list the mileage between stops, or the tourist destination you’re planning on visiting. Ask your fans for suggestions on places to check out, the best food stops in town. Invite a few out for pre-show pizza. 

These are the people who might may to come see you, right? Maybe buy a CD or shirt?

Remind your fans what you’re about, not just where you’ll be two months from now.

Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.

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Callsheet Post 1. Seth W: blogger extraordinaire.

This series is written and curated by publicist and industry mastermind Bill Meis. When not helping your favorite band planned their next phase of promotion Bill is a family man with an interest in sharing the creative people he’s met through music with the world. Through his official blog he recently started interviewing those he finds interesting, and with his permission we are going begin sharing them on our site as well. You can find Bill on Twitter and Tumblr. Follow him.

I work with a lot of interesting people. 

Each of these industry war-hogs have their own stories and a shed full of tools they use every day. 

My Callsheet blog series showcases these well oiled machines of the music business. 

I met Seth W at a show in upstate New York about 13 years ago. I played with my band, and Seth was his own. Since then he’s become one of the sharpest blogging minds in the country. 

Name: Seth Werkheiser

Twitter: @sethw

Location: Pennsylvania (at the time of this interview)

Your Current Role: Founder of Skull Toaster, purveyor of nerdy metal trivia since 2011.

Your Previous Role(s): Founder of Noisecreep in 2009, Buzzgrinder in 2001

One phrase that best describes your work style:

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Your mobile hardware: iPhone 5 with Mophie Juice Pack, laptop, Logitech wireless mouse

Your computer: 2008 Aluminum MacBook

Your 5 Go to Web/Mobile Apps and why:

1. Rdio: New releases every tuesday, old favorites, social works well with people I follow, and the Recommendations are pretty spot on. Waiting for Metallica, though! Argh.

2. Google Apps for Business: Email + Docs + Drive for the storage and easy sharing of files.

3. TweetDeck: Twitter on the web is awful, and I don’t like the Twitter Desktop app, so this works best.

4. TweetBot: 80% of Skull Toaster is done through Twitter, so I need an app that’ll keep up when I’m mobile, which is most of the time.

5. Evernote: Perfect sync of notes between my laptop and phone. I couldn’t do Skull Toaster without this. Holds all my client work info, travel details for when I’m on the road (like screenshots and phone numbers). Can’t recommend Evernote enough.

What’s your workspace setup like?

Just a laptop on a desk, or kitchen table.

What’s your best time-saving tip or trick?

Using followupthen.com to remember to follow up on certain items. This means I don’t have to set a reminder or a Calendar item to follow up. That may only take a minute, but add that up over a year and that’s too much time. I just forward the email and it pops up in my inbox when I need to act on it.

What’s your favorite to-do list manager?

I don’t use one.

Which area of technology excites you most?

Mobile web. Blogs ruled in 2006. Social media rules now. I think mobile web becomes the wild west and I can’t wait to see how that plays out.

Besides your cell phone and computer, what gadget can’t you go without and why?

Mophie Juice Pack. I don’t fault the iPhone at all, since I use this amazing piece of technology that fits in my pocket every hour of the day.

What everyday thing are you better at than everybody else?

Managing email. Inbox zero, always. As I mentioned before, followupthen.com let’s me get emails out of my inbox to follow up when needed. Then forwarding emails toEvernote, and organizing them by client or project helps me stay super organized. So when someone asks for details on a project I can go to Evernote (on my laptop or iPhone) and find the details in seconds. That means no folders or “tags” or whatever in Gmail. I’d never go back to organizing things in email ever again.

What was the last book you read?

‘Show Your Work’ by Austin Kleon. Great read.

Where do you get your industry news?

Twitter. If the news is big enough, it bubbles up to people I follow. I stopped following news ever since I read ‘Four Hour Work Week.’

What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?

“Ship,” from ‘Linchpin’ by Seth Godin. Ship something. Get it out of the door. Make a website. Produce a video. Have something to show for your expertise, no matter how bad the first version is. Ship it, anyways. The next one will be better, and the one after that. Always be shipping. Five years from now you’ll wished you started today.

What’s the one activity you use to escape?

Long walks with no music. I force myself to 100% be in the moment, and not let the problems follow me. If shit is on my mind I look at a tree and think, “tree, tree, tree.” Look at a house, and think, “house, house, house.” The faster I get out of my head, away from everything, the better I’ll be when I sit back down at my computer to get back to work.

What’s your sleep routine like?

I’ve been couch surfing since 2010, and have only had my own bed for seven or eight months during that whole time. Right now I sleep on a couch. Asleep at 3am, up by 9am most everyday, or earlier.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“We’re not saving lives.” Shit happens, deadlines are missed, managers are angry, label doesn’t like a review, at the end of the day, hey, we’re not saving lives. Relax.

Are more a phone call person or email/text worker?

Email and text.

What music app do you use to consume music the most?

Proud paying subscriber to Rdio for the past few years.

I’d love to see _________ answer these questions.

Jeremy Saffer.

Inspired by the fine folks at LifeHacker and their How I Work blog series, the Callsheet series gives the spotlight to the people behind the scenes that keep the music business going. The managers, road dogs and 3am phone call takers who live and die making things happen. Callsheet gives you a chance to learn their secrets, tips and tricks that make their day easier.

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